Suella Braverman And The Reverse Kellyanne

Many in the UK derided Kellyanne Conway, then Counselor to Combover Crybaby Donald Trump, when she defended then White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s use of a flat-out lie as “alternative facts”. How they laughed! We didn’t do that sort of thing in Britain. Well, in 2017, maybe we didn’t do so much of it. But in 2022, the Tories do. Frequently. Blatantly.

Suella Braverman

The new twist given by alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his coterie of ineptitude is that, instead of the Spicer and Conway method of lying and passing it off as facts, they also take actual, provable and well documented facts and declare them to be mere opinions.

To no surprise at all, the latest exponent of the “reverse Kellyanne” has been one Suella Braverman, elevated by Bozo to the post of Attorney General, a role to which she appears totally unsuited, especially when it comes to any task that requires the deployment of significant intellectual capacity.

So let’s look at how Ms Braverman shamelessly deploys a combination of “reverse Kellyanne” and “non-reverse Kellyanne”, along with a sprinkling of malevolent abuse, deflection, and flagrant false equivalence, beginning with her appearance on the BBC Radio 4 World At One yesterday.

It was put to her “This Government keeps doing things that others judge to be illegal. We can go back to prorogation, Partygate, the Northern Ireland Protocol, deporting asylum seekers. I wonder how comfortable you feel with the reputation this Government has guilt up with regard to lawbreaking”.

What say that Government’s most senior law officer? Get ready: “Well, with respect I think that’s a BBC view, if you don’t mind me saying, that the UK Government is somehow is always malevolent and the EU is always acting as the honest broker … when it comes to our international reputation, we only have to look to our partners in Ukraine”. Full house! BINGO!!

Kellyanne Conway

Three of those four issues had nothing to do with the EU. It’s not a view. And what Ukrainians think of us has sod all to do with it. This was not an isolated occurrence: she appeared before the interrogation of ITV political editor Robert Peston later, with rather similar results. Here’s the exchange.

Peston (for it was he): “Theresa May, for example, told the Prime Minister that if he signed this Northern Ireland protocol, we would end up in just this crisis. So you can’t invoke the principle of necessity. You’ve plainly broken the law”. Pesto grounds his argument in fact. So you know what’s coming.

Ms Braverman: “That’s just not right, Robert, and I’m afraid I’ve got to say that this is your ‘Remainiac make believe’, if I may put it that way, that the EU is always in the right … the reality is that there are strains, there are severe problems ongoing within communities in Northern Ireland. The Northern Irish economy is lagging behind the rest of the United Kingdom”. ENOUGH!

Facts are make believe! Plus a claim about the Northern Ireland economy that is, you guessed it, another flat-out lie. Also, Femi Oluwole had a question for Ms Braverman which she won’t be answering any time soon. “Here's DUP Sammy Wilson explaining in Oct 2019 that Johnson's deal would separate Northern Ireland from the UK. So despite being pro-Brexit, he rejected the Tory Brexit because it would lead to where we are now. Is he a ‘remainiac’ too, [Suella Braverman]?” Another example of Tories ignoring reality.

Perhaps, now that Lord Geidt has been revealed to have resigned as Bozo’s ethics advisor because he was asked by the PM to sanction “a deliberate and purposeful breach of the Ministerial code”, the “reverse Kellyanne” will be put out there once more in defence of a Government which has now demonstrated that it is totally out of control.

Suella Braverman is paid out of your taxes. Thought you’d like to know.

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Rwanda Removals Ceases Trading

During his time as very occasional Mayor of London, alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was, as the late Russell Harty might have put it, famous, nay, notorious for spraying public funds up the wall. Vanity buses, vanity cable car, plan for a vanity airport, vanity water cannon that never saw service, vanity garden bridge that never got built, all showed the world the scale of Bozo’s largesse - providing someone else was paying.

Smirktastic, pop pickers

So it has continued in Government, and last night brought another half a million notes sunk and lost as Benidorm Holiday Rep Priti Patel, for some reason elevated to run the Home Office, failed in her bid to rile up the Gammonati by sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, on the false premise that this would discourage people traffickers from putting them into inflatable boats and sending them across the Channel from France.

The real target of this rotten policy

No people traffickers have been arrested, or even mildly inconvenienced. The policy is just to shore up the racist right, that part of the Tory vote the party needs to have any chance of hanging on to all those “Red Wall” seats it won in 2019. There is no other consideration in play, no matter what excuse is offered up, or how the alleged policy is dressed and packaged.

Nor, it seems, has there even been any consideration as to whether Ms Patel’s whizzo wheeze was even legal. Because, last night, as an already-paid-for Boeing 767 stood there on the apron at RAF Boscombe Down, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Bozo and his Home Secretary were about to abuse the human rights of those being deported.

The bad news for the Tories came from QC Jessica Simor: “European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg grants rule 39 request to stop the flight to Rwanda from leaving. Basis: real risk of inhuman and degrading treatment (Art. 3 ECHR). Please share - government must comply”.

There was more. “This is in relation to one individual but the ruling contains a generic test that would apply to any of the applicants who have pending legal proceedings, which is likely all of them in so far as they have sought interim injunctions (ie until their cases are heard)”. So was that that?

Paul Brand of ITV brought confirmation that that was indeed that: “Home Office source believes we are now down to zero on the flight - they do not expect it to take off. But they are trying to confirm with Home Office lawyers … the flight will not be taking off after all asylum seekers were pulled off”.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan took time out from dealing with Bozo’s rotten legacy to us know where he stood. “Tonight's inhumane deportation of asylum seekers to #Rwanda has been stopped by the ECtHR - minutes before it was due to depart. Sending people fleeing violence to a country thousands of miles away was already cruel and callous. It's now potentially unlawful too”.

Tory cheerleaders were soon talking up leaving the ECHR. But David Allen Green had bad news for them. “Remember - the Good Friday Agreement expressly requires the UK to have the ECHR directly enforceable in Northern Ireland. Ergo, the UK cannot leave the ECHR without breaking the Good Friday Agreement”. Which it claims to want to protect. Oh dear!

Jo Maugham had an additional reminder. “The only countries ever to leave the European Convention on Human Rights are Greece, temporarily, after a military coup, and Russia, after invading Ukraine. In case you were wondering what kind of company we'd be in if we left”. Yes, well.

And the Tweeter known as Otto English had done the sums, just to demonstrate how conservative Ms Patel’s singularly nasty gesture was not. “£500,000 to deport 8 people plus the estimated £30,000 per head cost of processing them in Rwanda. That's £93,500 each rather than the £12,000 it costs to process them here. Quite apart from the revolting inhumanity of it, that's bonkers sums in a cost of living crisis”. Well, quite.

A million kids go hungry while Bozo and his coterie of ineptitude laugh at them, cheered on by the bad faith actors in our free and fearless press. Meanwhile, LBC host James O’Brien had a reminder for the Tories and their media cheerleaders.”Please note the absence of any suggestion that people facing deportation fit any of the racist tropes used to justify the barbaric policy. They are not criminals or threats or terrorists. Their ‘crime’ was simply to get here. Like Nadhim Zahawi did, like Priti Patel’s parents did”.

He would have approved

And still no people traffickers have been stopped: they make a sale, get their money, their trade continues. But they were never the target: this is a cruel and obscenely inhumane idea dreamed up just to fight another phoney culture war, yet it serves one telling purpose: it exposes those who support it as unprincipled and inhumane bigots, charlatans of the lowest order.

They should stop and think, look in the mirror, ask themselves why they would treat their fellow human beings in such a callous way just to gin up the bigots. They will not. The sickness of the media class is thus exposed.

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The Great Guido Lies For Banksy

Had one been a devotee of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog - well, someone has to be - one might have formed the impression that the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr was on a hiding to nothing by defending the defamation action brought against her by the deeply evasive and singularly repellent Arron Banks.

The self-styled “Bad boy of Brexit” (there are good ones?) had asserted that Ms Cadwalladr had defamed him in her recent TED talk. The Great Guido, tipped off on a regular basis by the Banks camp, joined in the misogyny as the defendant was sneeringly nicknamed “Carole Codswallop”. Readers were left in no doubt that she would lose, and be cleaned out as a result.

Banks threatened an action against her lawyers. This conflicted them out, but all that the Fawkes massive told readers was that she had “fallen out” with her legal team (that was LYING). What they did not tell was that, when Banks was called for a little light grilling in court, he came across as less than totally convincing. But the judgment could still have gone in his favour.

Except it didn’t: this morning, in one of those rare and joyful GOT THE BASTARD moments, Banks had his case dismissed. HE LOST. And so did all the so-called journalists who joined in with the sexist, misogynist, leering, hateful and totally unprincipled pile-on. But, for The Great Guido, that they had backed the wrong horse so loudly and publicly could not be admitted.

So what did the judgement tell us? As the Guardian has told, “Mrs Justice Steyn ruled the threshold for serious harm had only been met in the Ted Talk but that Cadwalladr initially had successfully established a public interest defence under section 4 of the Defamation Act”. Do go on.

“The defence fell away after the Electoral Commission found no evidence of law-breaking by Banks with respect to donations but by that time - 29 April 2020 - the court was not satisfied that the continuing publication of the TED Talk caused or was likely to cause serious harm to his reputation”.

That’s fairly straightforward. But not in Fawkes world, where, contrary to all those media outlets which have reported the fact of the matter - that Banks had his action dismissed and therefore lost - victory has to be pulled heroically from the jaws of defeat. And so it came to pass.

“Judge Rules Cadwalladr Claims Of Russian Backing For Banks Were Defamatory, Awards No Damages” asserts the headline, managing to miss that the whole point of the trial was that at least one meaning had to have been found to be defamatory at common law in a previous meanings hearing (Duh!). The top-like spinning continued (unconvincingly).

“Banks failed to prove that ‘the publication of the TED Talk from 29 April 2020 caused and/or is likely to cause serious harm to his reputation’”. Yes, so HE LOST. But never mind, Banksy has made sure the Fawkes rabble have got his excuse note, sorry, statement, which they have published in full (yawn).

Meanwhile, some observers have actually been reading those parts of the judgment which were less than favourable to Banks. Like Peter Jukes of Byline Media, who noted “Aspects of Banks’s evidence… came across as evasive and lacking in candour… his attempt to claim ‘Russian gold sector consolidation play’ 7-page presentation was prepared by Andrew Umbers, rather than…. provided to him by Siman Povarenkin, [was] not credible”.

That will not have helped The Great Man. And before all those jumping on the Fawkes spin’n’smear bandwagon get too carried away, Nick Davies, who broke the phone hacking scandal, reminded us what this is all about: “A UK libel case costs a fortune. This stops reporters exposing the rich - and gags ordinary victims of falsehood who can't afford to sue. Lousy news orgs complain about the first point but enjoy the second. Anyone who cares about truth-telling will complain about both”. Guess where The Great Guido stands.

And lastly, this outcome has shown one more divide: between the real champions of good journalism and freedom of speech (who have been in Ms Cadwalladr’s corner), and the unsavoury convocation of propagandists, client journalists, shit shovellers, smear merchants, bad faith actors and casual misogynists (who have followed the Fawkes line). The latter demonstrate once more the rot at the heart of our free and fearless press.

Can you hear me Paul Staines? Your boy took one hell of a beating.

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Tom Harwood And The Art Of Lying

Are you sitting comfortably this fine weekend? Good. I have a story to tell you. And it’s all about lying.

Lying emanating from the political and media class is nothing new. But the spread of unchallenged lying is not only recent, but worrying, and moreso when it happens on prime time television from a broadcaster whose standards should mean doing better. Like calling it out.

What time is it Eccles?

The latest edition of the BBC’s supposedly flagship debate show Question Time featured, for reasons that have not yet been given, yet another propagandist from Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s news channel”), in the form of Tom Harwood, formerly teaboy to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog.

Harwood decided to pontificate on the subject of The Railway, which should have sounded alarm bells in any reality-based environment. He is, after all, the only pundit so stupid that he was gloriously and memorably Pwned by the Virgin Trains Twitter feed, after he presented himself at the barrier for a train from Euston to Manchester less than two minutes before departure time.

As is advertised all over Euston Station, the barriers had been closed two minutes before departure to allow the train to close up and make an on-time departure. Teaboy Tom was incandescent with rage: he would book with someone else next time he went to Manchester, which would be an interesting thing to see. He knew, whisper it quietly, zip about railways.

“I just find it extraordinary that we’ve gone through an enormous economic upheaval in this country. Every single private sector business is having to restructure, is having to do things differently [no citation] and yes, is having to find places to save costs” opined Harwood as he set up his false equivalence.

On he went. “And yet we expect that the public sector, almost uniquely, doesn’t have to make any of those same decisions [no citation]. That every single public sector employee in the railways can expect that their lives can continue completely uninterrupted compared to anyone in the private sector. I think [good to hear] that’s an extraordinary position to find ourselves in”.

Was there a point on the way? “Listening to the Prime Minister speaking today, some of the reforms that are needing to be made to the railways, there are some ticket booths around the country that sell about one ticket a week [this is total crap, uninformed bullshit, it’s not true, it’s a flat out lie]”.

There was more in the same vein. “These need to be manned all the time”. Name one. He won’t. He can’t. He’s making it up. HE IS LYING. And he is getting away with it. “Any rational business would think it would be rational to modernise, to update [the railways DID - decades ago] and move forward. And yet the RMT doesn’t want to anything like that”. Cos they did it already.

The lying continued unchallenged. “They want to freeze the railways in time [they never did, and they don’t], not make any new changes”. This lengthy and wholly dishonest tirade was heard in reverential silence not only by host Fiona Bruce (who probably also doesn’t know very much about the subject), but also by Wes Streeting. Which brings us to the Neil Kinnock moment.

We had a senior Labour MP - A Senior Labour MP - seemingly unable or unwilling to challenge a stream of malicious misinformation. Those citing Streeting as a future party leader should watch that performance - or the lack of it - and stop and think. Leadership material he is not.

Back to Teaboy Tom, sad to say he wasn’t finished. But he had just one more waffer-thin point to make. “This is national infrastructure [nowt gets past him]. I think there are certain points of national [sic] important infrastructure that does [sic] need to keep running”. So that point is what, exactly?

“And potentially we can learn from some of these European countries you were mentioning, Wes [who still wasn’t calling out the SOB] … we could learn from Spain, we could learn from Belgium, we could learn from France, we could learn from Italy, which all ban national strikes on their railways. That’s a sensible policy that can keep us moving”. HE HAD JUST LIED AGAIN.

But that, for Teaboy Tom, was not the point. He got his round of applause, and shovelled his ripe load of weapons grade bullpucky in the general direction of a prime time audience WITHOUT BEING CHALLENGED. And there’s the rub.

In the Tory Party, too many individuals from alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson downwards lie as a matter of routine. When they are not merely misleading, our free and fearless press lies, mainly because it, too, is just shovelling on what Bozo and the Tories have fed it.

But senior Labour politicians, and BBC hosts, should not be allowing the lies to pass without challenge. Had Ms Bruce done her homework, she would have known of Harwood’s tendency to spontaneous trouser ignition. And that is what makes it so much worse - the liars get away with it.

The Beeb, and Labour, have to do better. That is all.

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A Serious Sabbatical - Update

One emergency admission to hospital in Liverpool later, taken there and back by car as I was forbidden from using the train, a little light surgery, an overnight stay, and a week and a half (almost) to recover, and the news is that … there is not yet any news.

Everything seems to be going in the right direction following an enforced period of taking it even more easily than usual. Resting up has become the new seriously boring. Watching events while unable to post on them is doubly so. But that has to carry on until next week, when I get the thumbs up - or not, as the case may be.

I will post again in a few days’ time. Meanwhile, sit back and watch the live on-air disintegration of the worst Prime Minister ever. Remember where you were when the fall finally came.

A Serious Sabbatical

I have to take a break. It may be a few days, it may be longer. But a break has to be taken. So there will be, for the time being, little or no new content on Zelo Street.

Service will be resumed - well, when it’s resumed. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to look in on the thirteen years’ back catalogue.

 

Australia Rejects Murdoch

It is the country where it all began: where so much of the print and online media, and indeed broadcast media, is under the ultimate control of one individual, an individual who is no longer a citizen there. Australia has the longest history of Rupert Murdoch exercising his malign influence, mainly thrown behind successive Governments of the Liberal-National Coalition. That support continued with this year’s Federal election campaign.

Voters got the usual Murdoch fayre: blanket support of Scott Morrison, leader of the Coalition, and blanket dismissal of Labor leader Anthony Albanese. And, up until this election, Murdoch tended to get what he wanted, as he has in the UK since the Sun first shilled for Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Former PM Kevin Rudd lined up the endorsements.

The Courier Mail, Herald Sun, Australian Daily Telegraph, and of course the Australian, backed Morrison. The Australian’s associate editor Chris Kenny, displaying the Murdoch arrogance and swagger that comes with the sure and certain knowledge that your chosen candidate will prevail, told his readers that “Scott Morrison will be the first Prime Minister since John Howard to win an election and lead his party to the next one”.

Sadly for Rupe and his Australian troops, that one soon joined “Dewey defeats Truman”, as Australia’s electorate declined to do Rupe’s bidding and bundled more than 20 of the Coalition’s MPs out of their seats. Labor’s gains were not so great, with Greens and Independents doing well. And out there on the right, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and United Australia have thus far, as Richie Benaud might have put it, got No Score.

So what went wrong? Simples. On issues like climate change, the population knew it was real, was happening, and was increasingly affecting them. Morrison was rather too relaxed about it. The Murdoch press was, too. There is only so much mileage in gaslighting when your target audience knows it’s being taken for fools. One former Murdoch editor said so.

David Yelland, who used to edit The Sun, concluded “Australia today shows us populist mass market media may no longer carry the day, it has become partisan, climate change-sceptic, old, white, male, tired, irrelevant, ill-judged, wrong”. Australia is an increasingly multicultural and, whisper it quietly, tolerant country. The old dog whistles don’t work.

Commentator Rohan Connolly was not displeased at that state of affairs: “Feels pretty good to wake up today knowing whatever is ahead, we WILL have a more compassionate and inclusive government, and that media monopolies CAN’T simply impose their will upon us. Was a huge moment for this country and we’ve nailed it. Well done Australia”.

And to show that Murdoch still doesn’t get it, after Malcolm Farr, longstanding contributor to News Corp properties, observed “The disconnect between News Corp papers and voters is the huge media story of the election. The screwed coverage and impotence of the brace of tabs and the national daily is going to be difficult for News to overcome”, the Australian Daily Telegraph produced a superbly tone-deaf response to the result.

Under the by-line of Peta Credlin, the article declared “Go Right To Save What’s Left Of Libs”. Like, even further right. When parties in that area have just scored zero seats.

Murdoch will now try his damnedest to finish Albanese. Hopefully no-one will be listening.

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Sickness Of The Press EXPOSED

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us; To see oursels as ithers see us!

The words of Robert Burns were never more truly spoken than when directed towards our free and fearless press. Indeed, when those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet do see how others see them, they are exceedingly reluctant to take the hint.

Cripes chaps, that foreigner rumbled me!

Worse, they are equally reluctant to admit their complicity in the increasingly authoritarian behaviour of alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his coterie of ineptitude: indeed, for most of them, Bozo is not to be questioned, but cheered on, whatever the policy, whatever the result. The move that should have seen our media class stop and think concerned a potentially swingeing cut of Civil Service numbers.

Tim Shipman - dismissive

After Beth Rigby of Sky News told “Have it from 2 senior sources that [Cabinet] Office about to do a write round to all permanent secretaries to ask them to model headcount reductions in their departments of 20% 30% & 40%. This follows calls from PM for 20% reduction in staff - 90,000 people - across Whitehall”, one onlooker said what she thought.

Iain Dale - yet more dismissive

Annette Dittert, bureau chief for German broadcaster ARD, responded “Everyone in Britain still acts as if this was a normal government. Instead it is a project of deliberate destruction, of laws, of institutions, of anything that stands in the way of a PM who just doesn’t want to be held to account”. She was right. But the press didn’t want to listen.

Tim Shipman of the Murdoch Sunday Times was one of those not prepared to take reality on board. “More unbiased reporting from our German colleagues. I don't know a single British reporter who would tweet something like this”. Sneering dismissal. And a total lack of awareness of why “a single British reporter” would not say “something like this”.

He was not alone: Iain Dale of LBC followed Shippers’ sneering dismissal, and raised him a few chips of defensive, judgmental whataboutery. “Nice to see you cover our politics in such an impartial, unbiased way. Perhaps turn your fire on your own government's lack of leadership over Ukraine and its craven attitude to Russia. Shameful”. That’s quite some brass neck, given the amount of Russian influence in the Tory Party right now.

At least the responses didn’t include “Two World Wars and One World Cup”, but give it time. Ms Dittert’s point was well made: outlawing peaceful protest, encroachment on human rights, leaning on the Police to investigate opponents, demonisation of lawyers and the judiciary, forced media sell-off for no other reason than vindictive spite, off-the-scale misuse of taxpayer funds, and tacit encouragement of a Prime Ministerial support cult.

Some of that misuse of funds was, by the belated confession of former chief Downing Street polecat Dominic Cummings, expended as sweeteners to that very same media class that is now responding to Ms Dittert with “Fingers in ears, La La La, I can’t hear you”. As Cummings put it, “the newspapers negotiated direct bungs to themselves with him, no officials on calls, then he told officials to send the £ -- dressed up as 'covid relief’”.

Ms Dittert told Dale “You should know that it’s not mutually exclusive to criticise your own government (which I have done extensively if you had read any of my tweets) and realise what’s going wrong in another one”. But whether Dale was listening is doubtful.

The Tweeter known as Steve Analyst observed “Weird how journalists in this country rarely ever call out journalists in this country, but suddenly tonight it's open season on a non-British journalist who had the nerve to question the UK. Our journalism industry is a disgrace”. When Nick Davies, formerly of the Guardian, did call out the tabloids on phone hacking, he was ostracised and denounced. Piers Morgan called him “Judas”.

When SNP MP Mhairi Black addressed the Commons this week and warned that the UK is sliding towards fascism, the press mostly ignored her. The same press that is so heavily invested in The Adoration Of The Boris. One of theirs is in Downing Street. They are right about everything, and so must he be. For them it is one big jolly game.

This is not a cult ...

And what sport it is! Climate change is real? Quick, hire someone who says it isn’t! Someone is so poor they have to travel round on a bus all day to keep warm? Quick, have them investigated and smeared! The EU? Get someone to denounce it! Yes, even Brexit is part of that game. They can always gaslight and ostracise anyone who dissents.

... not a cult at all

There are fewer journalists with any specialist expertise, but this too is not a problem. Denounce experts! Wait for a press release from an Astroturf lobby group! Job Done! Tell the readers what is good for them! Tell them what to think! Demonise any information source that might make them knowledgeable! All power to the Boris!

(c) Martin Rowson 2016

Perhaps - just perhaps - there are some in the media class who know they are aiding and abetting a project of national self-harm, an exercise in increasingly authoritarian rule, a Government based on narcissism, corruption and dishonesty, a country now regarded by others as an object of ridicule, a pariah state, increasingly a basket case.

Lockdown? What lockdown?

But any such realisation is kept quiet: the Mafia-like control exercised by proprietors - like Rupert Murdoch - and managerial tyrants like the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre keeps those with access to the media megaphone cowed and compliant.

But don't step out of line, Rupe's listening

In the USA, Combover Crybaby Donald Trump was removed before he got the chance to totally foul up the country. The Johnson cult is now busying itself making damn sure that doesn’t happen here. Bozo doesn’t want to be accountable, and nor do his ministers. And he wants to stay in power, especially if he can do so without actually doing any work. That is what our media class is there to facilitate. While brooking no criticism from others.

And don't f***ing cross me, c***

That is why Annette Dittert was so viciously shouted down. She should not be surprised if the practitioners of The Dark Arts are now turned on her, such is the press’ sickness.

After all, there has to be someone to blame for our ills. And it won’t be the press.

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